Microsoft Analysis Services, MDX, DAX, Power Pivot, Power Query and Power BI

SQLBits 9 Summary

Well I’ve just recovered from yet another SQLBits, and for some reason (probably the obscene amount of beer consumed – I don’t even want to think what the bar bill will be like) it needed a lot more recovering from than previous events. That only goes to show how much I enjoyed it though…! Everything went well in the end; I think part of what makes SQLBits what it is is the slightly shambolic nature of it and nothing ever goes completely to plan, but we had no major disasters and attendance was comparable with Brighton. In my opinion we had some of the strongest content we’ve had for a long while: I particularly enjoyed Kasper’s session on Crescent and Alex’s session on comparing PowerPivot and Qlikview, plus the sessions from Jen on mobile BI and Marco on how Tabular will change how we model data. If you weren’t there, we recorded all the sessions as usual and they’ve be available in the content section of the site in a few weeks.

I’d like to thank my fellow organisers, and everyone who helped out during the conference, for making it such a success. One of the questions I always get asked about SQLBits is “Why do you do it?”. It is a lot of effort, but in the end it’s great fun too – not only do you get to learn stuff, but it’s an excuse for everyone in the SQL Server community to get together and have a drink and a chat. I’m looking forward to a few weeks off though before we have to start planning the next one…

In the meantime, don’t forget about SQLRelay this week. I’ll be speaking in Hatfield tomorrow night and there are events taking place all round the country too. And if you’d like to stay in touch with what’s happening in the world of SQLBits, why not join the SQLBits LinkedIn and Facebook groups and see what people are saying on Twitter about us.

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As well as being a blogger, I'm an independent consultant specialising in Analysis Services, MDX, PowerPivot and DAX. I work with customers from all round the world solving cube design problems, performance tuning Analysis Services queries and calculations, writing complex MDX and delivering training courses, and I am happy to work on short-term engagements. For more details see http://www.crossjoin.co.uk